Mixed Race Studies

Taking race out of the equation in measuring women’s risk of osteoporosis and fractures

UCLA Newsroom
University of California, Los Angeles
2012-10-18

Enrique Rivero

For women of mixed racial or ethnic backgrounds, a new method for measuring bone health may improve the odds of correctly diagnosing their risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures, according to a UCLA-led study.

Currently, assessing osteoporosis and the risk of fractures from small accidents like falls requires a bone density scan. But because these scans don’t provide other relevant fracture-related information, such as bone size and the amount of force a bone is subjected to during a fall, each patient’s bone density is examined against a national database of people with the same age and race or ethnicity.

This approach, however, doesn’t work for people of mixed race or ethnicity because comparison databases can’t account for mixed heritage. A similar problem exists for those from smaller racial or ethnic groups for which there are not comparison databases.

“All the current ways of determining your risk for fractures require knowing your race and ethnicity correctly, and they ignore the fact that racial and ethnic groups are not homogenous,” said study co-author Dr. Arun Karlamangla, a professor of medicine in the geriatrics division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “It also flies in the face of the current reality in Southern California, where so many people are of mixed ethnicity.”

Given that osteoporosis and hip fractures are leading causes of injury in older people, alternative means of measuring risk are needed. Now, a UCLA-led team of researchers has found a way of assessing risk without knowledge of a person’s race or ethnicity. The method involves combining bone mineral density measures with body size and bone size to create composite bone strength indices.

The findings are published in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism…

…”The importance of bone size to fracture risk has been recognized by engineers and radiologists for some years now,” said the study’s lead investigator, Dr. Shinya Ishii, who started the research while a fellow in the UCLA Division of Geriatrics and is now at the University of Tokyo. “But no one, until now, has combined bone density, which is the traditional measure of osteoporosis, with bone size and body size to get at a more uniform way of assessing osteoporosis that applies across racial lines and does away with the need to know the person’s race or racial mixture.“…

Read the entire article here.

SOCI 395-005: Plessy to Martin: Race and Politics

George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia
Fall 2013

Rutledge M. Dennis, Professor of Sociology

This course examines the issues, individuals, and groups central to the intersectionality of race, culture, and politics in American life. We will begin with the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case which solidified and legitimized the nation’s “separate and equal” racial policy until Brown v. Board of Education. A critique of this case allows us to understand the intricate relations between the nation’s racial theories and policies and its public politics and culture. These racial, political, and cultural issues will provide the background from which we analyze the individuals and groups whose actions and positions presented challenges and counter-challenges to America’s image of itself as a free and democratic society. As a consequence, we will examine how racial and cultural politics were driving forces in the public debates and controversies surrounding such cases as the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama, Robert Williams in North Carolina, Emmett Till in Mississippi, Medgar Evers in Mississippi, Martin Luther King in Georgia, Angela Davis in California, O. J. Simpson in California, Rodney King in California, and currently, Trayvon Martin in Florida. The central questions in the cases presented above focus on why, and in what ways, did racial feelings, fears, and animosities surface as they did, how were intragroup and intergroup relations affected by such attitudes and behavior, and what were the short and long-term societal consequences of these attitudes and behavior.

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At the very outset we must face three possible alternatives as we consider the concept of race: 1) there is such a thing as race  in mankind; 2) there is not such a thing as race in mankind; 3) even if race in mankind exists, it can have no significance save as people think of it and react to their conception of it. In the first alternative we shall turn to those physical anthropologists who treat race as a biological phenomenon, separating and classifying groups of mankind according to certain descriptive and mensurational categories. In the second alternative we must turn to those few geneticists and fewer physical anthropologists who, when they refer to mankind, use “race” in quotation marks as if by so doing they can, in effect, recognize its existence while denying its implications. In the third alternative we must turn to those social anthropologists who treat race principally in terms of social interaction.

Wilton Marion Krogman, “The Concept of Race,” in The Science of Man in the World Crisis, Ralph Linton, ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 38.

Exploring African-American Fatherhood

The New York Times
Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism
2012-06-15

David Gonzalez, Co-editor of Lens

What compels you to shoot? That was the question David Alan Harvey asked his students during a workshop last year in Brooklyn. We all have our reasons — if not our obsessions — flashes of realization that come through the viewfinder and into our hearts. For Zun Lee, one of the students, the answer was uneasily evident.

As a street photographer, he had always been attracted to fleeting scenes of fathers and children. He was drawn to those moments, even if he wasn’t quite sure why.

Well, maybe he was.

“In 2004, I discovered my biological dad was African-American,” said Mr. Lee, who had been raised in a Korean family in Germany. “It had basically been a one-night stand. He ran away when he learned she was pregnant. She doesn’t even remember his name anymore.”

That revelation would inform his latest work — “Father Figure,” an exploration into the lives of black fathers.  Working over the last year in New York, Chicago and Toronto, where he now lives and works as a health consultant, he has delved into the lives of men who have made the choice to stay near their children as best they can…

…“Learning about my biological father wasn’t just a traumatic experience,” Mr. Lee said. “Learning the news was in a weird sense a homecoming.”…

Read the entire article here.

Obama bares his ‘blackness’ in Trayvon speech

The Buffalo News
2013-07-20

Sonya Ross
The Associated Press

In a move unparalleled among presidents, Barack Obama reflects on being black in America.

WASHINGTON – Something in President Obama’s voice caught Gregory C. Ellison’s ear. It was fleeting, subtle, and easy to miss — unless you’re a black man, too.

“In between his personal reflections on what it feels like to be an African-American man, and the history of pain and his strategic plan, there was what I call a very pregnant pause,” says Ellison, a theology professor in Atlanta.

“If I ever have an opportunity to talk to President Obama, I would ask him what was he searching in his soul during that pregnant pause?”

Obama was wrapped in presidential authority Friday as he talked to a nation rubbed emotionally raw in the week since the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was acquitted in a Florida courtroom.

Then, in a move hardly anyone saw coming, Obama unwrapped himself, and put his own young, black face on Trayvon’s dead, young, black body.

This first black president, the guy accused by some of running from his blackness, of trying to address black folks’ needs on the down low, suddenly lifted the veil off his black male identity and showed it to the world. It was something no American president before him could have done.

He had to do it, Obama said, because “Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago.”…

…Greg Carr, chairman of the Afro-American Studies department at Howard University in Washington, said the president “has an authenticity, because he does signal to the black community that he too has experienced what we experienced.”…

Read the entire article here.

Discussing Trayvon Martin, Obama Embraces his Blackness

The American Prospect
2013-07-19

Jamelle Bouie, Staff Writer

On Obama’s remarks this afternoon.

When President Obama issued a pro forma statement following last week’s verdict in the Zimmerman trial, there was some disappointment—“Why didn’t he say more?” It only takes a small step back to see the answer; not only would it have been inappropriate for the president to question the decision of the jury, but given wide outrage at the ruling, it could have inflamed passions on both sides.

But it isn’t out of bounds for Obama to speak on the meaning of Trayvon Martin, which he did this afternoon, during a White House press briefing. And unlike his earlier statement, this was a frank and heartfelt take on the racial issues surrounding the shooting and the trial.

Which, to be honest, came as a surprise. Barack Obama’s entire political career has been about de-racializing his personal identity. Yes, he was a black senator from Illinois, but for white audiences at least, he wasn’t a black one. It’s why the Jeremiah Wright controversy was so dangerous for his candidacy—it emphasized his blackness at a time when he was trying most to build a universal appeal…

…Obama gains nothing by identifying with his blackness, but in talking about Martin, he did exactly that. “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” said the president, “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” He continued, “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”…

Read the entire article here.

Fracture Risk Assessment without Race/Ethnicity Information

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Volume 97, Number 10 (2012-10-01)
pages 3593-3602
DOI: 10.1210/jc.2012-1997

Shinya Ishii
Department of Geriatric Medicine (S.I.)
Graduate School of Medicine
University of Tokyo

Gail A. Greendale
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Jane A. Caule
Graduate School of Public Health
University of Pittsburgh

Carolyn J. Crandall
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Mei-Hua Huang
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Michelle E. Danielson
Graduate School of Public Health
University of Pittsburgh

Arun S. Karlamangla
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Context: Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry-derived bone mineral density (BMD) does not explain interracial differences in fracture risk; thus, BMD-based fracture risk assessment requires patient race/ethnicity information and ethnicity-specific BMD reference databases.

Objective: The objective of the study was to investigate whether composite femoral neck strength indices, which integrate dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry-derived femoral neck size, femoral neck BMD, and body size, will allow fracture risk assessment without requiring race/ethnicity information.

Design: This was a prospective cohort study.

Setting and Participants: A total of 1940 community-dwelling women aged 42–53 yr from four race/ethnicity groups (968 Caucasian, 512 African-American, 239 Japanese, and 221 Chinese) were followed up for 9 yr.

Outcome Measurements: Self-reported, nondigital, noncraniofacial fractures were measured.

Results: Two hundred and two women (10.4%) sustained fractures and 82 (4.3%) had minimum-trauma fractures. Each sd increment in any of the strength indices was associated with a 34–41% reduction in fracture hazard over 9 yr (each P < 0.001). Race/ethnicity predicted fracture hazard independent of BMD (P = 0.02) but did not predict fracture hazard independent of any of the composite indices (P = 0.11–0.22). Addition of race/ethnicity did not improve risk discrimination ability of the strength indices, but did significantly improve the discrimination ability of BMD. The discrimination ability of BMD with race/ethnicity was not statistically different from that of any of the strength indices without race/ethnicity.

Conclusions: Composite strength indices of the femoral neck can predict fracture risk without race/ethnicity information as accurately as bone mineral density does in combination with race/ethnicity information and therefore would allow risk prediction in people of mixed race/ethnicity and in groups without a BMD reference database.

Read or purchase the article here.

Crossed Lines in the Racialization Process: Race as a Border Concept

Research in Phenomenology
Volume 42, Issue 2 (2012)
pages 206-228
DOI: 10.1163/156916412X651201

Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies
Pennsylvania State University

The phenomenological approach to racialization needs to be supplemented by a hermeneutics that examines the history of the various categories in terms of which people see and have seen race. An investigation of this kind suggests that instead of the rigid essentialism that is normally associated with the history of racism, race predominantly operates as a border concept, that is to say, a dynamic fluid concept whose core lies not at the center but at its edges. I illustrate this by an examination of the history of the distinctions between the races as it is revealed in legal, scientific, and philosophical sources. I focus especially on racial distinctions in the United States and on the way that the impact of miscegenation was negotiated leading to the so-called one-drop rule.

Read or purchase the article here.

Voice of the voiceless? Multiethnic student voices in critical approaches to race, pedagogy, literacy and agency

Linguistics and Education
Volume 24, Issue 3, September 2013
pages 348–360
DOI: 10.1016/j.linged.2013.03.005

Benji Chang, Adjunct Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Curriculum & Teaching
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York

In this article, the author utilizes critical and sociocultural approaches to race, language and culture to examine the intersectional experiences of a multiethnic and ‘mixed race’ cohort of students in an inner-city, working-class neighborhood between their elementary and high school years. This article examines the students’ experiences in a nine-year educational process focused on critical pedagogy, sociocultural learning, and community engagement in and out of classrooms. More specifically, the article looks at interview, participant observation, and narrative data with a Latina/o and Asian American male student, and an Asian American female student, and how they made sense of their experiences over time with regards to issues of race, pedagogy, literacy, and agency.

Highlights

• Critical race, ethnic studies, and sociocultural theory are used to examine K-12 student voices.
• Classroom teaching, parent engagement and community organizing are discussed.
• Asian American, multiethnic and ‘mixed race’ contexts help challenge race, culture and achievement paradigms.
• Student cultural, linguistic and literacy practices are built upon toward transformative outcomes.
• 9 years of data are used to inform more dynamic and sustainable approaches toward educational equity.

Read or purchase the article here.

Burton Mixed Heritage Oral Hers/His story project

East Staffordshire Rights & Equality Council (ESREC)
July 2012
39 pages

The mixed heritage community is the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the UK and is predicted to be the largest minority ethnic group by 2020.The ethnicity category Mixed was first introduced in the 2001 UK Census, where 677,177 people classified themselves as of mixed race, making up 1.2% of the UK’s population.

The origin of mixed heritage people in this country started en masse in the early 1940s when the USA entered World War II. Some of the American soldiers who were stationed in the UK were black and whilst here formed relationships with local people resulting in the birth of children. When they returned to the USA many left their families behind.

In 1948 the UK government was heavily involved on its national rebuilding programme following the war. People were invited to the UK from the Commonwealth. It is well documented that many came on the SS Windrush from the Caribbean, with others coming from India, Pakistan and other Commonwealth countries.

The Burton Mixed Heritage Project recognises the importance of capturing and preserving the experiences of the 1st, 2nd, and the current generation of mixed heritage people in East Staffordshire and surrounding areas.

We recorded the interviews and divided them into 3 categories to show their experiences for the benefit of future generations.

1. The G.I. Generation (1941-1964)

This generation is descended from foreign mainly Black soldiers who were stationed in Burton and surrounding areas, who had children with the local residents. It also includes the Windrush generation.

2. The Beat Generation (1965-1984)

These are the children born from the union of different cultures i.e. people from the Caribbean or the Asian sub-continent joining with people from the UK

3. The Y Generation (1985 -present)

Young people who were born in the late 80s/early 90s and are of mixed heritage.

Our aim is to empower, educate and inform people of mixed heritage communities, and society at large about their experiences and journey. This DVD aims to show you that “On every corner there is a story”

Read the entire report here.